Chemical Bank employees teach classes at Eagle Village

By the Midland Daily News

Published 5:00 am, Thursday, January 24, 2013

Branch Manager Chad Booher and Christina Foster from the Evart branch of Chemical Bank have been visiting a classroom at Eagle Village for the last six weeks, covering many topics relating to personal finance and credit.

They have given lessons on personal banking, checkbooks and savings. In the most recent class, Booher brought in a guest speaker, Michelle Thren, who is a fraud specialist with Chemical Bank. Her real-life examples and discussions about their own future credit responsibilities had the teens at Eagle Village very interested. Some of their comments included:

“The Chemical Bank classes are pretty awesome. I didn’t know I could steal my own identity! They’re teaching us how to prevent identity theft and about banking like accounts and writing checks.”

“I didn’t know how many different ways there were to have your identity stolen. As far as credit goes, I didn’t know how important it was. I just thought as long as I paid it back, everything would be OK. I didn’t know credit companies target my age group.”

“It’s amazing that they take time out of their schedule to come in and teach us about all of this because they really don’t have to.”

Booher shared his thoughts on their volunteer efforts.

“Knowledge is very powerful and given they will go out in the real world soon, hopefully they will put some of these lessons into place. I know that I am very interested in continuing this partnership with Eagle Village and hopefully helping these young people get a good start when they leave the program,” he said.